We are Joy and Bob Vaeth. We own The Little Engine Academy as well as the underlying real estate at 499 S Nova Rd. We moved to Ormond Beach in June 2013 to run our school. We are here every day from 6:30 am until we close at 6pm. Please stop by for a tour, you do not need an appointment. Its best to come in the morning or later in the day, not when the kids are napping after lunch.

We now have an 'after school' bus with our Little Engine logo to pick up students at Tomoka, Ormond Beach and Holly Hill Elementary Schools.

We use the PAT (Preschool Automation Technologies) security and database technology that Bob wrote.

The doors to the classroom area are always locked. Parents, teachers have access through an electronic key card system. Parents and teachers must sign in at the front podiums. This keeps us informed of who is in our building. Visitors must sign in at the front desk.

We believe in transparency. The Little Engine Academy parents can now login anytime / realtime to see their child in his/her classroom via iPhone, Droid, iPad or laptop. Access is password protected for each user. See the Parents tab on this site, and see Bob about your user name and password.

FREE VPK is available to all Florida four-year-olds, from 9am till 12pm. VPK programs utilize learning through play, developmentally appropriate instruction and activities to prepare children for kindergarten. Your child must be four years old on or before September 1, 2014. We offer our WRAP afternoon class for a full day of care. We will also offer a private prekindergarten (PPK) for children that turn 4 on or before December 31.

We have selected The Creative Curriculum. It provides a solid structural foundation that allows teachers the creativity to cater to the specific needs of each child. The exception is our kindergarten class where we're using the A Beka curriculum.

We serve 3 meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. We update the menu tab here by Saturday of the upcoming week.

Children walk to our cafeteria for each meal, one of the daily transitions that they experience at The Little Engine Academy. On the way they'll pass by our many wall murals of scenes from around the world, painted by local artist Jeannie Jesse.

We've installed our new backyard playground equipment with upstairs and downstairs forts and 2 side by side slides (for racing!). Until about noon and then later in the afternoon both the green slides and the bigger swings are shaded from the hot sun by the trees overhead. The kids are usually outside in the mornings and after 4pm when it's cooler and shadier.

Our goal here is to inspire and educate the kids. Trains are full of history and lore, and about making things work ... 'real stuff' that can ignite and engage the inquisitive mind in a young child. The Flagler Model Railroad Club (FMRRC) builds our Lionel lobby train garden. Please introduce yourself to Al and Steve and Herb and Don as you see them working on the garden. They love model trains. Everyone is invited to our 3 annual open house events whether your child is here or not: (1) our Haunted and Scary Open House on Friday October 25th 2013 from 4-7 pm, (2) our December Christmas Open House with our joyful Christmas display, and (3) our early February Daytona 500 theme. New members and parent/child teams are welcome to join our club at $10 per month. We'd love your help building our garden or getting it ready for our 3 annual events, especially the 500 where we try to re-create some history of Old Ormond, the birthplace of speed. And if you have some Lionel family trains that you'd like to run on our garden, we'd welcome that as part of our loaner program.

Scroll to the bottom of this site and push 'T' to watch our Little Engine train chug along! Push 'C' for the clouds.

In addition to the regular classroom activities, our teachers incorporate Spanish into their day via www.funclase.com, built and hosted by local Ormond Beach educators Robin and Dale. Please visit their site to learn more.

We are using www.abcmouse.com in our computer lab. We chose ABC Mouse because many of our parents are already using it and highly recommended it to us. You can view your children's lessons and drawings at home if you wish, by creating an abcmouse home account and logging in via thie authentication code that our director, Tiffany, will email to you.